Making Sense of the Never-Ending, Never-Availing Trump Investigation

[dualstow]

That Russia tried to influence the US election may have been news for about 30 days after November of 2016. That it remains news today in April of 2018 is because of the yachts for CEOs.

I agree, partially. The other half is because Trump is a polarizing figure. He knows how to stay in the news, good or bad. Those who hate him, hate him with a passion. Russian influence is one part of that, and as long as an official investigation continues, that is most definitely news. It is covered by plenty of outlets with no money, and who will make no money.

That said, I admit that if Mueller dropped everything today, I wouldn't really care.

[stuper1]

It is covered by plenty of outlets with no money, and who will make no money.

I don't understand this point. How does a news outlet stay in business if it makes no money. As I understand it, the news media in this country is controlled by just a few major companies, all of whom make their money based on advertising from Big Business of which a large part is the Military Industrial Complex. It's all about the dollars, of course. Always has been, always will be. It makes me sick when it ends up with the US "liberating" another far-off country, with huge concomitant civilian casualties, when it's really just about making more money for the MIC. We don't have to be the world's policeman. It seems to be a job for which we volunteered.

[dualstow]

It makes me sick when it ends up with the US "liberating" another far-off country, with huge concomitant civilian casualties, when it's really just about making more money for the MIC. We don't have to be the world's policeman. It seems to be a job for which we volunteered.

You sound like Harry Browne. Your point is valid, and I'm torn on the issue myself. There are many misadventures of which I'm not proud, and at the same time I really dislike the idea of us becoming isolationist.

I think the whole military-industrial complex gets too much "airplay." We live in an imperfect world. I don't mean to sound defeatist. We already have to contend with countries run by autocrats and thus very little red tape. We're doing okay with our shaky little democracy and our system of checks and balances.

Perhaps our role in the world will be diminished whether we stay on this course or whether we, by some miracle, become a more moral, non-interventionist, ideal society & nation. China will become the world police and a good part of the rest of the world will say that the United States wasn't so bad, in retrospect. But why didn't they save us?

It is covered by plenty of outlets with no money, and who will make no money.

I don't understand this point. How does a news outlet stay in business if it makes no money. As I understand it, the news media in this country is controlled by just a few major companies,

Well, the television and radio channels are, but the Internet has afforded us alternatives.

[stuper1]

I think the whole military-industrial complex gets too much "airplay."

Follow the money, baby, follow the money. Who benefits when we shoot off 100 missiles at Syria? How many millions of dollars of profit to the missile maker does that one salvo represent? And by many accounts, that salvo basically accomplished nothing. Not that I wish it had accomplished anything. I just wish it hadn't been made in the first place. Let the Syrians figure out how to run their country. What business is it of ours? We should just dial back the foreign interventions from the present 8 to about a 2. But it won't happen, because the MIC won't allow it, and they control the purse strings to our representatives.

And then there's the whole "invade the world, invite the world" issue. We get involved in foreign affairs too much, and then we feel like we have to take in all the refugees, etc. Of course, Big Business likes that too, because it provides more "growth" opportunities, which is what business needs, basically cheap labor and lots of consumers.

[dualstow]

The top three countries of origin are Mexico, India and China.
Immigrants are important, but you’re right. I do wish we could be more selective. Friendlier tham Trump, but more discriminating than Merkel.

[Kriegsspiel]

It makes me sick when it ends up with the US "liberating" another far-off country, with huge concomitant civilian casualties, when it's really just about making more money for the MIC. We don't have to be the world's policeman. It seems to be a job for which we volunteered.

One of the best quips from CPL Person, in Generation Kill, when they're driving through a devastated landscape littered with smoking corpses.

"Yup, they're pretty much liberated around here."

[stuper1]

Because it's unremarkable, to be expected, and probably has been going on since 1776.

[moda0306]

Because it's unremarkable, to be expected, and probably has been going on since 1776.

It's hard for someone like me to become "outraged" at Russia doing these things. It's totally standard operating "World Power" procedure.

That said, this is in no way an argument that it shouldn't be investigated to wherever it leads, especially if American "leaders" were involved.

In-fact, it's the ubiquitous nature of some of the nastier aspects of human nature that make problems that are "unremarkable and to be expected" some of the most important ones to address. Some might say the movement of poor brown people into a rich white settler colony. Others might say preventing pollution. Depends on what your priorities are.

[stuper1]

How do you feel about that investigation being used, either explicitly or implicitly, as part of the justification to continue spending billions of dollars on our military-industrial complex, because you just never know when those Russkies might invade our homeland?

[dualstow]

That's not really fair. We're going to keep our military upgraded no matter what. We don't need Russia's antics as a pretext. And if anything, it's China's military that's going to pose a threat someday.

[stuper1]

That's not really fair. We're going to keep our military upgraded no matter what. We don't need Russia's antics as a pretext. And if anything, it's China's military that's going to pose a threat someday.

As soon as one bogeyman starts to look less dangerous, the MIC invents another one to justify keeping up the military spending. The current one is Russia, which actually poses very little threat to our national interests. The thing that's "not really fair" is that our MIC keeps getting bigger, our taxes keep going up, and collateral damage in various countries around the world never stops. The MIC uses a small portion of their profits to fund political campaigns, and the cycle never ends.

[Cortopassi]

I really don't think we need to spend more....





But it seems as % of GDP, not as bad:

[dualstow]

Stuper, I would agree that our defense budget is out of whack, as Gates suggested years ago.
I don’t know that Russia is a bogeyman to be feared. Their military is no match for ours, although I’ve read that their air defense capabilities are far superior to what Trump imagines.
I think the invasion of the Ukraine and annexation of the Crimea speaks volumes. Don’t need a speech from Netanyahu or talk of yellowcake uranium.

I guess I’m somewhere in between the Neocon push to assert our dominance everywhere and the totally non-interventionist sticking our head in the sand. One would have the kind of fallout you mentioned, but the other would see a world dominated by China, Russia and Iran. Best we can do is intervene here and there with allies.

[WiseOne]

Maybe the problem isn't that the US is spending too much on defense, but that the other NATO countries are spending too little, and we're having to pick up the slack. That's also been a pattern since WWII. (exceptions: Germany and Japan...they have low defense spending by design and it may be a long time before the world will trust them with a strong military again.)

Speaking of NATO...what happened to the campaign talk of "rethinking" it?

[stuper1]

Well I agree with everything you said here. And your boy Donald is continuing the tradition, but at an even more breathtaking rate.

Haha, yeah, he stopped being my boy when he sent the first salvo of missiles to Syria, I guess that was last year. But I don't have the abhorrence of him that the virtue-signaling leftists have. He's just another schmaltzy politician. He is doing a bit to strengthen the border, which is a good thing. It's not as you suggest because I think that Mexicans are dirty. It's because a nation that doesn't have a defined border isn't much of a nation. Where does it begin and end? Mexicans and anyone else are welcome to come in, but we have a legal process in place for that. If they don't want to follow the legal process, then guess what, they are here illegally. I don't blame them for that. They are just trying to better themselves. I blame our government for not having the spine to make it tougher for them. Meanwhile, I still see plenty of Americans who appear to need jobs. If we let more immigrants into our country (whether legal or illegal), does that make it easier or harder for the American unemployed to find a job?

[WiseOne]

He is doing a bit to strengthen the border, which is a good thing. It's not as you suggest because I think that Mexicans are dirty. It's because a nation that doesn't have a defined border isn't much of a nation. Where does it begin and end? Mexicans and anyone else are welcome to come in, but we have a legal process in place for that. If they don't want to follow the legal process, then guess what, they are here illegally. I don't blame them for that. They are just trying to better themselves. I blame our government for not having the spine to make it tougher for them. Meanwhile, I still see plenty of Americans who appear to need jobs. If we let more immigrants into our country (whether legal or illegal), does that make it easier or harder for the American unemployed to find a job?

I don't think many people understand just how important this is - probably including Trump himself.

Consider the "opioid crisis" which has been getting so much press lately. Haven't any of you wondered at least a little bit why this is happening now, with little or no change in the supply of prescription or illicit opioids? And why it's disproportionately hitting lower to middle class whites, to the extent that their life expectancy has been reduced? And do you all realize just how significant a drop in life expectancy is, in a first world country? It is an extremely rare event with ominous implications.

There is a crisis all right, but it's not about opioid medications. It's about depression and hopelessness on the lower end of the economic scale. There are several causes, many of which Trump pegged in his campaign and which everyone else has been working very hard to ignore. Lax immigration policy is one of them. It is beyond frustrating to see the extent to which most of the political machine doesn't get it, even after the 2016 wake-up call that taught them nothing. Instead, they & followers insist on trying to cast hardening the immigration legal process as "racism". This is the same group that's pushing the Russia investigation, which is why I'm thoroughly suspicious that their motives are not as stated - since "interfering with elections" has indeed been business as usual around the globe for a long time.

[moda0306]

"Jobs" are either a zero sum game or they're not... if they are not, and we all benefit from more workers moving to where there is more high-paying work, spending money to create more jobs while they do it, then society as a whole might well gain.

If this is all a zero-sum game, though, and there's only so much work to be done, and we have to batton down the hatches to do it, then keeping brown people out of this country is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. Our overlords have made it abuntantly easy for capital to go flying around the globe in a flash looking for the highest rate of return for the ownership-class, pitting workers and nations against each other, polluting and exploiting the living hell out of any locale they can get away with it, and we are here trying to make sure Josh's job doesn't go to Jose just before rebalancing into our Emerging Markets ETF.

Not to go all lefty on y'all, but either we have a wage/job problem and workers of the world need to unite, or it's not a problem and we can quit pretending that this is about protecting American incomes. Keeping brown people out isnt enough. In the world that we've allowed the Bush-Clinton duopoly to set up, capital will find a way to fuck "overpaid" workers and robust environmental regulations.

[moda0306]

Also, WiseOne, don't you always trust the motives of any person or group in their decision-making? I know I do. Usually our motives are a mystery to even ourselves, much-less the public.

I know I concern myself far-less with ulterior motives perpetuated towards the powerful rather than the non-powerful, who are usually scapegoats.

So while I don't necessarily trust Mueller's motives, neither do I trust the myriad of Trump-excusers out there who are bending over backwards to make him out to be a threat to the deep state and anti-establishment. I especially don't trust Trump and John Bolton with the most powerful killing force in the history of the world. Nor would I have trusted Hillary, but she's not in power now. Trump is. And he just put a flatulating, unapologetic war-criminal in a top spot of foreign policy decision-making.

So while I don't trust lawyers investigating Russian meddling and domestic collusion with it, I have far more concern with war-mongers with unilateral power to direct our military and intelligence strategies.

[dualstow]

(Trump)'s just another schmaltzy politician.

stuper: just a trivial note here, but schmaltzy means maudlin or sentimental to a fault.

[moda0306]

(Trump)'s just another schmaltzy politician.

stuper: just a trivial note here, but schmaltzy means maudlin or sentimental to a fault.

And by "just another," he probably should have said "also worse in every single measurable way."

Every negative trait about a politician, Trump is worse in spades. The only exception being the "polished faux-intelligencia bullshit speak," of which he attempts sometimes when he's not sputtering utterly wreckless, untintelligble garbage.

Even his private-sector bonafides are most Trust Fund Baby bullshit.

But I digress.

[dualstow]

WiseOne: I've been seeing a lot of articles about deaths of despair lately.

[stuper1]

(Trump)'s just another schmaltzy politician.

stuper: just a trivial note here, but schmaltzy means maudlin or sentimental to a fault.

And by "just another," he probably should have said "also worse in every single measurable way."

Every negative trait about a politician, Trump is worse in spades. The only exception being the "polished faux-intelligencia bullshit speak," of which he attempts sometimes when he's not sputtering utterly wreckless, untintelligble garbage.

Even his private-sector bonafides are most Trust Fund Baby bullshit.

But I digress.

Sorry, it was late. My brain wasn't working very well. Plus I think I thought that schmaltzy meant something else. Anyway, I should have used another word, but even now I can't think of the right one. Maybe "buffoonish"?

Anyway, I don't see Trump as worse in every way than most politicians. What have most politicians accomplished in their lives other than just blow a lot of hot air? At least Trump has run some successful businesses (and apparently some unsuccessful ones as well). And I for one appreciate his candor and lack of sugar coating things. He just tells it like he sees it. Not many politicians do that.

I do agree with you that picking Bolton is a huge problem. If ever there was a war monger, Bolton looks like the guy.

[moda0306]

stuper: just a trivial note here, but schmaltzy means maudlin or sentimental to a fault.

And by "just another," he probably should have said "also worse in every single measurable way."

Every negative trait about a politician, Trump is worse in spades. The only exception being the "polished faux-intelligencia bullshit speak," of which he attempts sometimes when he's not sputtering utterly wreckless, untintelligble garbage.

Even his private-sector bonafides are most Trust Fund Baby bullshit.

But I digress.

Sorry, it was late. My brain wasn't working very well. Plus I think I thought that schmaltzy meant something else. Anyway, I should have used another word, but even now I can't think of the right one. Maybe "buffoonish"?

Anyway, I don't see Trump as worse in every way than most politicians. What have most politicians accomplished in their lives other than just blow a lot of hot air? At least Trump has run some successful businesses (and apparently some unsuccessful ones as well). And I for one appreciate his candor and lack of sugar coating things. He just tells it like he sees it. Not many politicians do that.

I do agree with you that picking Bolton is a huge problem. If ever there was a war monger, Bolton looks like the guy.

My problem with the "tells it like he sees it" argument is twofold:

1) He's borderline incoherent.

2) He's very inconsistent.

There are about 20 comedians and commentators I can easily think of that "tell it like they see it," and I wouldn't ever put Trump in anywhere near them in terms of the value of that trait. If "they way you see it" is grossly incoherent and inconsistent, it's not of much value.

Further, to zoom in a bit, there are a lot of militant leftists that "tell it like they see it," and I have trouble believing that anything but a tiny fraction of Trump excusers that praise him for that trait would support candidates if they vociferously advocated us to "purge the plutocracy," open the borders and disarm the public of anything more than a shotgun, even if they were hugely more consistent and coherent than Trump.

[Mountaineer]

Welcome to the consequences of the "it's all about me, what I want, and what I think I deserve" worldview. As the common threads that held us together in the past continue to fade and fewer and fewer people want to join and become part of something bigger than they are, something else is taking its place - a worldview that expounds "what can I get from this situation to make me happy?" rather than "what does my neighbor need that I can joyfully give or do for him/her?" Our politicians are a reflection of us, sad to say, but increasingly true.

[stuper1]

Shyster. I think that's the word that my 52 year old brain couldn't find last night. Typical shyster politician.

But with at least one difference. Trump's net worth is probably at least 100 times more than your typical senator say. So, the hope of a lot of people that voted for him (I wasn't one of those, having not voted in 30 years) was that maybe he would be less influenced by special interests. Probably isn't working out that way, but that was the hope.

I've listened to a few speeches he's given. He didn't sound incoherent to me. He sounded fine in my view. Maybe that doesn't say very much for me. But when I read the media accounts of what he had supposedly said, they didn't sound anything like what I heard with my own ears. Interesting.